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Thursday, February 2, 2017

Lots to see in Cadiz, Spain!

Yesterday morning we moved from our beach camping spot near Roche to the ancient port city of Cadiz (pop 124,000).

Along the way, we stopped in at a huge Carrefour grocery store and did some stocking up. They had some good specials on, including some "buy one at regular price, get the second at 70% off" deals. These are especially worthwhile when they apply to the already cheap booze!

Let me give you an example. We bought twelve 500 ml cans of good beer, 6 bottles of wine, a cheap bottle of baileys, and a decent bottle of sherry for a total of $37 CAD ($29 USD). Nice!

From there, we continued on to Cadiz. There is a parking area near the port that has a special for RV's at €3 per night. No water or dump station, but there are decently clean toilets open 24 hours. Cheap overnight parking within walking distance to the old city.

Never got a photo of Louis parked up here, but it's raining now so I'm not going out to take one for you! GPS coordinates are 36.537592, -6.29006

It was almost 2:30pm by the time we got parked up and set off to explore. The city of Cadiz is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in Europe. It dates back to the Phoenicians around the year 1100 BC. So, there's lots to see here!

The old city wall.

Wow...that's a big tree!

They say this dragon tree is over 100 years old.

The old La Caleta city beach.

There are a couple of fortresses dating back to the 1600's. We were pleasantly surprised to find that they were free to visit!

From one of the two fortresses.

Looking back at the promenade.

La Caleta Beach.

Just some birds.

We walked out the pedestrian causeway to the island where the lighthouse and the other fortress are. Beautiful day, and even saw one girl go in swimming! Too chilly for us!

The lighthouse looks like a rocket ship of some kind.

Looking back at the city.

We walked over to the huge cathedral. It's a massive building, but not that old having been built between 1776 and 1892. We almost went inside to pay the €5 ($7.25 CAD, $5.50 USD) admission fee each, but decided not to because it was after 4:30pm already and we still had more to see. Perhaps we'll go back today.

The huge cathedral in Cadiz.

The huge building has huge doors!

Wandering the medieval streets.

We finally found the Roman Theater. It was only discovered in 1980 when a fire destroyed some warehouses and excavations revealed a largely intact Roman Theater dating back to the first century BC. It is the second largest one in the world. Unfortunately it was only open between 10am and 4pm, so we'll go back today to have a better look. And, admission is free!

We snuck a photo between the bars, but we'll try and get a better one for you today.

Arrived back to Louis at around 5:30pm. We had walked 10.5 kms (6.5 miles). A good day, but we haven't seen everything we wanted to yet. So we're going to stay for another night. A rainy day so far, but it's supposed to clear up a bit after lunch.

22 comments:

Fascinating..especially that huge door. I take photos of doors everywhere I go..also would love to know what sort of meals you are able to prepare in the RV..whats available? Anything like what you buy at home or do you eat local. Keep up the posting.

I prepare most of the same meals that I did when we had a real house. Just because we are in a small place I don't let that stop me. I can't do any baking though as we don't have a stove in this motorhome, it also doesn't have a microwave which doesn't bother me because we don't have one in our motorhome in Canada either. We only have a two burner gas stove top so I do lots of stir frys, curries, pasta dishes, omelets, chicken/fish with potato and veggies and also salads. I cook mostly whole foods, never prepared ones and always healthy ones.

When we first started walking about we weren't to thrilled with the city because we saw lots of graffiti and places looked closed down and dumpy but the more we that we actually got into the old city itself our opinions changed. The city with well worth a stop and visit for a couple of days. Yesterday we actually got into the church but because some kind of service was going on, we only quickly looked around and didn't take any pictures but we weren't able to see some of the other sections of the church that you would be able to see if you paid for the tour. To be honest it was impressive looking but we have definitely seen way more interesting churches in our travels.

We found in Malaga the amphitheater was free and yet we would of had to pay to go in the cathedral. I so disagree with charges for places of worship especially when the "Church" has incredible wealth. Good to see you are stocking up for our arrival x

We totally agree with you Helen, and we really had to toss this one around a little before we decided not to pay for 2 reasons. One, because we managed to get into the church yesterday and have a quick look around when a small service of some sort was happening. The church was certainly impressive but not stunning and secondly because it was a miserable day and the view that we would have got from the clock tower would have been non-existent.

I think that lot of booze will be gone before you get here, we'll have to stock up again before you arrive. ;-)

Cadiz looks amazing! Would love to walk those medival streets. Very good price on the liquor! Looking forward to more pictures of this lovely place! Hope the weather improves over the next few day! Drive safe and enjoy!

We really enjoyed our visit of Cadiz, definitely lots to see here. It is funny, they have the "old city" part but then they have a "medival quarter" section in the old section. The medival part is older than old!

It will be a few days before the weather clears up but at least it isn't cold.

True but you wouldn't be able to see all of the church that way. We have seen many, many churches without having to go to a service and without any admission fee so I think we will just keep doing what we are doing.

It is truly amazing watching you two scamper around Spain like a couple of school kids. Thanks for sharing with us. We have had spotty internet so have got behind on blog reading, but we are back on track now. Safe travels.

Okay, this is a long story... you better make yourself comfortable! Some of our long time readers might remember that I (Kevin) need to ge...

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